<pre>

OpenEMR Internationalization Documentation

I.    Multi-Language Tool
II.   Official OpenEMR Language Translations
III.  Language Translations Setting
IV.   Developer Instructions

I. Multi Language Tool.

  This is the Language Administration page in OpenEMR. This is where you can
customize languages and language definitions. You can add new languages,
,add new English Constants, and modify/add language definitions. (Please note
you can also enter your translations into the official OpenEMR Language
Translation GoogleDoc spreadsheet; see section II. for details)

  The following is an explanation of the options in this tool:
    Add Language: You get a box to enter a new language.
    Add Constant: You get a box to add a new string to be used in the translation
                  function, this one should be used only if you know what you are
                  doing, mostly, if you added some custom programming with new
                  text output. The "constant" string can be literally what you
                  want to say or a shorter reference to it.
    Edit Definitions: English is used as the reference language, if you click
                      the English label you'll get a set of all constants and
                      the English definitions at the side. If no definition is
                      loaded yet for a given constant then a blank box is shown,
                      by entering a definition and clicking "Load Definition" 
                      you save whatever changes you made. If you select other
                      language than English, you get a set of all constants,
                      the English definition at the side, and an input box
                      to enter/modify the definition in the selected language.
    Manage Translations: This tool allows you to re-synchronize your
                         local language modifications after importing
                         an official released set of OpenEMR translations.


II. Official OpenEMR Language Translations

  The OpenEMR language official translation sets are built from a
collaborative Google Doc. If you would like to add a language or help
with a current language, please contact us.  You could then enter your
translations into this spreadsheet, which will then become a permanent
part of OpenEMR. This process has become very streamlined with a fast
turnaround time, so we would suggest you enter data on this collaborative
spreadsheet. Note that the translations sets are built daily; to download
the most uptodate set of translations, visit our documentation at open-emr.org .


III. Language Translations Setting

  These are configured in the Administration->Globals interface.
Mainly, you can configure the default language and what is
displayed in the login language selection menu (you
can also disable this menu). There are also more advanced
setting to turn off certain parts of the translation
engine. Please see the section of Administration->Globals for more
details.


IV. Developer Instructions

The translation is done by the xl() custom function, which can be found
at openemr/library/translation.inc.php.
Its semantics are very simple.

xl(string)

Which with examples means:

xl('translate this')

By default the function will return the translation.

First it uses the LANGUAGE constant defined to pick the translation.

Second it goes for the translation, if none is found, then the same string entered is used and returned as is.

Another example of use includes:

echo ("this and " . xl('translate this') . " that too");

Further details and rules on use can be found on the wiki here:
http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Development_Policies#Internationalization

There are also wrappers to the xl() function that are used infrequently in specific situations. Please
refer to openemr/library/translation.inc.php for more details.

</pre>

